Predator Turnabout

"Sloane turned his attention back to his weapon.
As sniper rifles went, this was the top of the line: The Chey-Tac M-200 Intervention. You couldn't buy one unless you were military, or in a police sniper unit-or unless you knew somebody, and even then, it wasn't cheap. The rifle was capable of hitting a man-sized target at two thousand meters, and held the record at that range-three rounds into a sixteen-inch circle, in the field, with a wind not in a bench rest."

"Using a Nightforce NXS 5.5 - 22X variable-mag scope the Advance Ballistic Computer system with the Kestrel sensor
station, accurate shots at really long ranges were possible. With the M-40, .408, 419-grain round, at eight hundred to a thousand meters? Even a so-so shooter could hit a bear-or whatever the
fuck these monsters were- -ninety-five times out of a hundred, and any solid hit should damn sure knock it on its ass. Sloane was better than a so-so shooter."

"Behind him, Mary said, "Can you even do it? Kill them with that? You said the bear hit them and didn't even slow them down.

He hefted the rifle. It was heavy-twenty-seven pounds without the scope and loaded magazine. "This will punch a hole through a half-inch-thick steel plate at six hundred meters. To stop the round,
you need four-inch armored glass or rolled
homogenous armor."

"Excuse me?"

"An APC. Or a tank."

"How is it possible a civilian can even own one of these?"

"He knows somebody who remembers he wasn't always a
civilian," Sloane said. "And he saves his money."

She looked at him.

"Costs about fourteen thousand dollars. The handloads are passing expensive. Six or seven bucks a round."

"Fourteen thousand dollars?"

"Not a lot to spend my pay on out here," he said. He waved randomly at the door, the vastness of Alaska. "And quality costs."

"I don't understand why you would think you needed such a
thing," she said.

He shook his head. "But I do need it, don't I?"pg.76-77 chpt.8